#and mythology is one of my special interests

[leveragedlibrarians]

I'd say the Librarians are demigods and the Guardians are Satyrs (traditionally protectors of demigods). That said, I know I saw a post on here once upon a time comparing the characters to the muses that was AMAZING but I sadly cannot remember or find it :(

So I think most obviously Ezekiel would be the child of Hermes. God of thieves, currency, luck, and travelers. I mean, come on.

Cass I could see a few different ones-most notably and obviously comparing her to the oracle cassandra for her visions- but I'm leaning towards a child of Mnemosyne, who is technically not a god but the Titan of memory. This goes great with both her eidetic memory and her hallucinations being linked to memory.

Jake is another one I could see in a few different ways. My first instinct was Apollo, god of music and poetry- but then I thought about Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and passion which goes well with his love of art.

Flynn I got stuck on for a while. The only one I could think of was Athena, but let's be honest she's the goddess of wisdom and that just didn't feel right for Flynn (I like it for judson though). Then I remembered that other pantheons exist and he's literally the child of Thoth. Egyptian god of knowledge, writing, hieroglyphs, and.... well just look at what Wikipedia has to say about him:

So Flynn is the child of Thoth now I don't make the rules.

Not to pop up randomly in the year of our lord 2024, but I’ve watched Percy Jackson recently and now I’m curious. If the librarians characters were in this universe, what would they be? Demigods? Satyrs? Centaurs? Monsters? Humans? Let’s get this conversation going for anyone still left in this fandom or any followers that are still around;)

[masochist-marmot]

If anyone out there is interested, this is a direct quote from the Finnish national epic Kalevala (or more precisely, its English translation by John Martin Crawford in 1888). Here it is in Finnish:

Siitä jauhoi uusi sampo, kirjokansi kiikutteli, jauhoi purnun puhtehessa: yhen purnun syötäviä, toisen jauhoi myötäviä, kolmannen kotipitoja.

In the Finnish mythology, the Sampo is a magic mill forged as a gift for the mistress of the North (Louhi) in exchange for one of her daughters. The Sampo can be used to grind grain, salt and gold out of thing air, which is probably where our favourite con artist gets his name. Koski is a fairly common Finnish last name that literally translates to a "stream" but doesn't have any direct relation to Kalevala. Although, eventually the Sampo is stolen and ends up sinking to the bottom of the sea, so there could be a tenuous link to that.

And for any fellow linguistics nerds out there, most of Kalevala is written in trochaic tetrametre, meaning that every line consists of eight syllables (or four feet) where a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed one. We actually call this "the Kalevala metre", and you could take almost any line from the epic and ask a (musically inclined) Finnish person to sing it. It was made to be sung. And what makes me incredibly happy is that the translation keeps the same metre: "Well the Sampo grinds when finished, to and fro the lid in rocking."

This also means that what Sampo is singing in this (regrettably unvoiced) scene adheres to the same rhythm, and the melody would probably be some variation of this: https://youtu.be/XRdCsEVFd4I?si=YDjFIVTFYwAsa8U7

[rapha-reads]

No but I gotta talk about Medusa for a minute actually.

It's been. A very long time since I read the PJO books so I don't exactly remember how Uncle Rick presents Medusa in the book. But the way the show introduces her myth? Fascinating. For me as a Greek mythology enthusiast, that is.

The show makes Medusa a victim of Athena. Of course, the show is mainly for kids, so they can't exactly say that, hey, kids, Medusa was Athena's priestess and she was raped by Poseidon, YEP, or protagonist's father, IN Athena's temple, nah, that's neither kid-friendly nor does it endears us to Poseidon. Not that Poseidon is very dear to us viewers/readers at this point, our narrator/protagonist can't stand his own dad.

But still what fascinates me is that even though they twisted the myth to ft the narrative they still managed to evoke Athena's curse as being actually a gift, and Medusa not feeling wretched over her condition but blessed.

Which is not a modern reading of the myth, actually. Saying that Athena couldn't punish Poseidon for his transgression and could only punish Medusa, but did so in a way that would give Medusa weapons to defend herself against whoever and whatever would try to harm her again, is a narrative that exists since Antiquity.

My point is that the re-framing of Medusa's myth, departing from the traditional, non-kid-friendly version while still incorporating both classic and modern elements, is a good frame of reference for the series (book and show)' entire approach to mythology. And I guess I'm saying that mostly for the non-book readers who are discovering this world, many of whom might be Greek mythology fans and might have gone "wait, why is Hades AGAIN presented as the bad guy when he's the chillest, most normal, most stable god in this entire pantheon", because that's a conversation the book fandom has been having (over and over again) for more than a decade.

Anyway, yeah. As a long time book fan and a show appreciative, here's my advice to anyone who knows WAY too much about Greek myths and still want to enjoy the ride without going every five minutes "wait, that's not correct": reframe. Contemporary rewritings, modern audiences and Fantasy genre.

[inamindfarfaraway]

The Exorcists’ Masks of Virtue

The vast majority of Exorcists in Hazbin Hotel have a notable design element that other angels don’t: their masks are missing an eye. Specifically, the right eye.

I believe this is a reference to the Bible, Matthew 5:29. Jesus says, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”

He’s being hyperbolic. Mr Free Healthcare was not pro-mutilation. What he means is that you have to be willing to make sacrifices to prevent sin. The context of the eye metaphor is him condemning adultery and warning that even something as easy, casual and small as a look full of lustful intent can lead to further, worse sin if you don’t notice your sin, hold yourself accountable for it and do the work to not let it influence your decisions. This will probably be hard. It could be very, very painful. Changing your perspective can feel as horrible as plucking out your eye, so many people can’t bring themselves to do it. But although it won’t feel that way in the moment, it’s healthier for our general wellbeing in the long run to abandon traits and behaviours that damage ourselves and/or others.

(You may notice that Jesus’s teaching that you can have sinned, redeem yourself by giving up sin and thus escape damnation is the founding principle of the Hazbin Hotel. You may also notice that it contradicts everything the Exorcists believe.)

The Exorcists seem to follow this idea of painfully excising badness for the sake of the greater good devoutly to the point of placing it above teachings like ‘Thou shalt not kill’, with their job being to remove sin, in the form of sinners, to protect Heaven. Hence the missing right eyes. They’re a declaration of moral righteousness and inability to stumble.

But the truth is that the Exorcists all have their right eyes. Their flawlessness is a facade. Underneath, they are untouched, think themselves morally untouchable and, as shown by their horror and outrage when even one of them is killed, would much rather be physically untouchable too. This perfectly represents their complete unwillingness to acknowledge their own faults, let alone improve. They are never the ones who sacrifice. They force the sinners to sacrifice and don’t compensate it with any salvation. They metaphorically rip out the sinners’ eyes, but still condemn their entire bodies as inherently, permanently sinful. So they’ll just have to do another Extermination to get the other eyes! And another one to cut off their right hands! And so on until there’s nothing left.

The only exception to the rule is Vaggie, both in appearance and character. Her mask has the left eye crossed out instead. Even before her expulsion, she’s set apart to the audience as an Exorcist who has the capacity to, shall we say, see a different side of things. Her mask having its ‘sinful’ right eye reflects her understanding that the Exorcist worldview is wrong.

When she almost kills a demon child, her hateful vision clears. She discards the part of herself that’s an unquestioning, merciless agent of death, terror and grief… and as punishment for what Lute perceives as treacherous weakness, gets her eye plucked out.

Of course Lute leaves her with only the ‘sinful’ eye. It brands Vaggie forever as the inversion, a perversion, of what the Exorcists are meant to be.

You know, all this talk of eye removal in the Bible reminds me of another line - ‘an eye for an eye’. Adam directly quotes it in “Hell is Forever”. He uses it to frame the Exterminations as Old Testament-style punitive justice; the sinners did harm and so they receive it. But putting aside the debate about how ethical the concept of revenge is, the entire point of taking an eye for an eye is that it’s proportional. The punishment fits the crime. If someone cuts your eye out, you shouldn’t murder their whole family in front of them and then slowly disembowel them to death. That would be the sin of wrath. You should just make them pay without excessive pain or collateral damage. This is the fairest form of revenge.

The Exorcists don’t do that! The Exterminations aren’t proportional to the wrongs of all they hurt, nor was Vaggie’s brutal punishment equivalent to her extremely mild insubordination. Lute literally takes Vaggie’s eye, and more, after Vaggie does nothing to her! That’s the opposite of the phrase! Adam and his soldiers are wrathful and cruel, deriving satisfaction from others’ suffering. But they just can’t stop going on and on about how disgustingly evil the sinners are, in total hypocrisy… despite some of the sinners being far better people than the genocidal Exorcists are… it’s like they’re obsessed with specks of dust in the sinners’ eyes when they have massive logs stuck in their own. Oh hey, that’s in the Bible too!

[thekeeperofbalance]

ft the fact that i plan on having a combination of rick's design of olympus & everything being in ny, but also keeping the mythology with its people (tho that's a bit nebulous, but whatever)-

aka camp half-blood stays in long island, yeah

camp jupiter? - still in california

but also: the world trade centre holds an entrance to olympus which is still on mt. olympus and the people do not need to leave their home continents to go to a safe place- olympus is still on olympus, the mountain, rome is still rome, etc- it's just the gods are no longer restricted, they are everywhere-

also kinda just like. rick did this for the egyptians and the norse??? why couldn't the greeks and the polytheistic romans (as compared to the christian/catholic romans) have multiple places of existence???

like. i'm also getting rid of the place-specific things, like álfheimr (alfheim) and niðavellir (nidavellir) not resembling boston and shit but also valhǫll (valhalla) and ásgarðr (asgard) being. like where they were modelled after in norse mythology-

also bye-bye bifrost bc that Did Not exist b4 like snorri sturluson-

actual norse mythology is super interesting, like immensely so-

rick did freyr & freyja so dirty- like, yeah, odin and thor were important, but. uhhhh ppl worshipped freyr & freyja as MUCH bc they were the FARMING gods and important

i feel like this post does a bit to establish my love for sociology, psychology, and anthropology- i love learning abt ppl it's amazing-

[library-fae]

waiting for hades ii to come out on switch (because that's what i played the original on) and im in agony

[chaos-in-one]

Me at every possible opportunity: I'm going to put foxes in this

[silent-lily]

Also I don't think I've ever had like THREE special interests at once (I can't really remember) - usually it's one or two at max

But currently one part of my brain is fixated on gay hedgehogs, other - on gay monkeys, and the darkest part of brain is just vibin' while waiting for Silent Hill 2 Remake. Awesome.

How the fuck did that happen.

[ophernelia]

audio is almost finished for episode 19. we're about to be on episode 20 already. the way i don't want season 2 of lykaia to end just yet cause ima miss it. my break is gonna be so brief after episode 22 cause i wanna get right back into it lol. i'll probably drop the pilot episode of jackpot during that time though. the plan was to switch off and focus on jackpot butttttt my brain says no.

[bee-ina-boat]

@ tma fandom, i have a concept:

the fear entities but they are mythological gods.

that is all thank u

[fallowfield]

unironically the elf yuri post with the high fantasy x santa's elf girls scratches an itch in my brain because it literally is like. dog breeds to me. the genetics that went into building one for survival and for the species to thrive and propogate in a mild forest setting and the resulting culture that followed (camoflauging into the trees with their willowy appearances, hair they grow out to imitate the growth of wisteria and willows and other types of tree, the silk clothink that is easy to manouvre in their cities and tie up to work in the underbrush, etc.) vs the harsh winter climates of the other (the small builds to withstand polar winds and hide from large predators under the snow, the rosy cheeks likely from higher body temp. to keep them warm in the cold, the knitwear and heavy clothing to prevent them from freezing to death). it all means so much to me when varying types of one species exist simultaneously in one universe. [shaking you by the shoulders] you understand. you HAVE to understand.

[astrxealis]

I ADORE GEN INFORMATION AND HISTORY STUFF SOOO MUCH ... and etc etc etc and and and :(( <3 god i love the plethora of information ik and. etc.

[thefreakandthehair]

So, one thing about me is I WILL read AUs and think of new ideas I’ll never write and something that’s been infesting my brain lately is PJO au. First glance will tell you Steve is a child of Aphrodite, because beauty and all that, except!

And I have two ideas here so I can’t decide which I like more - he’s actually a child of Apollo. It’s why his mother stays with his dad who’s an asshole, why she doesn’t leave him when he cheats, because she had the first affair and he can hold it over her. But then her son is just as golden as his real father, so neither of them can stand the reminder of where he comes from, which is why they’re never home. Or! On the flip side, his mother is Nike (made funnier by his preference for Nike shoes) because even if she abandoned him, she still watches out for him. But his father hates being reminded of the one woman who had really made him feel alive, so he marries a nice girl instead and chases after whatever thrill he can, even if it ruins their family.

And Steve, he goes to camp in the summer and learns how to fight, learns so much about himself and why school is hard for him and why sports just make sense to his brain. But the downside is that even though he knows how to fight, he can’t fight normal people. If he does, he’ll kill them, because he’s used to fighting bigger, tougher, not-normal people. So he loses fights, but damn if he doesn’t emerge victorious like Nike herself against monsters

I don’t know where I’m going with this but it’s in my brain

WAIT WAIT WAIT. okay first of all, same, my friend. I will read every AU imaginable. they feed me. but secondly, I love every one of these options but Steve as a child of Nike is thrashing around in my brain like a pinball machine.

Steve can't help but accept the competition when presented with a fight and losing hurts his soul, right down to his core, because he knows that he's letting the people who taunt him win to spare their lives! He's supposed to win, he's literally the child of Victory.

and if we extend this further into Greek mythology, Steve as the grandchild of Styx who was Nike's mother?! oh my God. there's so much meat here. I'm just sayin' that if you ever did want to write it, I am ALL EARS.

also, I'm tagging bestie who loves PJO and may have thoughts, hope you don't mind! @bayouteche

and another also, I found this pjo!AU by @ninjasteve a few days ago and haven't read it yet but it looks great and has Steve as a child of Aphrodite!

[random-cryptid]

i got distracted by a werewolf au for ms frizzle and i felt the need to share (i promise im still working on the other two drawings of winnie i just had to get this idea done lest i fucking explode dndjdj)

she'd be the floofiest sweetest werewolf methinks snndndn

also, i have two really big thoughts that have also been plaguing me alongside werewolf!ms frizzle /pos

because ive been thinking about monsterifying my fave characters, i started thinking about what type if monster winnie would be and i am torn between harpy and siren? like, obvs she'd be a siren cuz of her voice and her looks (cuz ive always been under the impression of sirens being both absolutely terrifying to most but also being hauntingly beautiful. kinda like how people view sharks and certain types of deep sea fishies) but on the other hand she gives me really strong harpy vibes and i cannot figure out what bird she'd be specifically. on the one hand, i wanna say peacock cuz like, have you met her? of course she'd be a peacock, theyre the prettiest most dramatic looking birds ive seen in my life shshdhd. but i also love the idea of her being a starling because of how quickly starlings can pick up and mimic any noise and mix it in with their song.

as for the other thought, i started daydreaming about winnie again (to literally no ones surprise shfhdh) and started thinking about her staying up at ungodly hours again and like, coming up to her snd gently holding her from behind, nuzzling my head into her neck before gently kissing her cheek and i am melting iver this help abndnn

OHHHH NICE WEREWOLF TIME!!!! She looks so good 🫶

Also, let me introduce you to greek sirens

Half bird instead of half fish, AND they still have the same mythological aspects as the sea counterparts!

However if someone were to be a mermaid it's pretty clear to me that it would be Sarah. I think Winifred fits more into the Harpy box because they represent the storm winds (y'know cause of her lightning powers haha got it). WAIT actually I'm reading through the Harpy article and it low key has Sarah vibes too specially this part:

(y'know cause she enjoys torturing people)

BUT it does fit Winnie too given that she enjoys punishing people (specially her sisters cough cough) UM ANYWAYS-

Some writers described Harpies as half human, half vulture. However I think she fits both the peacock and perhaps a storm petrel too!!! Storm petrels are said to be a bad omen to sailors cause it is said they cause bad weather (once again me and the lightning symbolism).

Oh she sure as hell stays up at unholy hours please give her some tea for everything that's sacred 😭 (also SIMP 🫵 /lhj)

[noxtivagus]

i love the sky so much